Disaster Recovery Through the Lens of Justice

By Alessandra Jerolleman

There has been increased attention to the topics of disaster recovery and disaster resilience over the past several years, particularly as catastrophic events such as Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy have brought to light the increasing vulnerability of so many communities. This manuscript brings together existing research, along with policy analysis, in order to look at disaster recovery through the lens of justice. This includes understanding the mechanisms through which vulnerability is exacerbated, and the extent to which the regulations and agency cultures drive this outcome. While existing analyses have sought to understand the particular characteristics of both resilient and vulnerable communities, there have been few attempts to understand the systemic inequities and injustice that is built into United States disaster policies, programs, and legislation. This manuscript thus begins from the understanding that social and economic structures, including land use policies andhistoric practices such as redlining, have concentrated hazard risk into vulnerable zones whose inhabitants do not benefit from the very policies that create and increase their risk.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Release date: Jan 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9783030047955

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© The Author(s) 2019

Alessandra JerollemanDisaster Recovery Through the Lens of Justicehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04795-5_1

1. Introduction: Recovery, Resilience, Vulnerability, and Justice

Alessandra Jerolleman¹  

(1)

Jacksonville State University, Metairie, LA, USA

Alessandra Jerolleman

Email: [e-mail]

Abstract

Disparate outcomes from disaster, including the permanent displacement and essentially forced internal migration of lower-income and minority residents, occurred following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and continue to occur following large disasters as well as chronic events. The introduction uses examples such as Hurricane Katrina to describe the nexus between justice and disaster recovery outcomes, arguing for the application of a capacities justice framework and a human rights approach in disaster recovery. The chapter provides some background on the existing literature and policy frameworks, including the concepts of resilience and vulnerability, along with the role of historic practices and systemic racism in the creation of the modern hazard landscape.

Keywords

Disaster justiceCapacities justiceDisaster recoveryClimate adaptationDisaster resilienceDisaster vulnerability

Over the five years following Hurricane Sandy, houses along the New Jersey coastline have become larger and taller than they had been prior to the hurricane. Median home prices have risen, while the percentage of full-time households, as opposed to second homes, has declined. As with many coastal communities across the United States, some measure of population shift and even coastal gentrification was already under way prior the storm, but as often happens, the combination of damage to older structures and the inability of residents living on fixed incomes to fully recover accelerated the trend (Terruso 2017).

Similarly, disparate outcomes, including the permanent displacement and internal migration¹ of lower-income and minority residents, occurred following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and continue to occur following large disasters as well as chronic events. In 2017 alone, over one million Americans were displaced from their homes by disasters (Goodell 2018). These outcomes are not solely a result of the disaster² itself but in fact largely stem from a history of disparities in health and well-being that serve to concentrate vulnerability within minority, working class, and poor communities³—who are then not given full access to resources or socio-political decision-making processes in disaster recovery because their voices and their knowledge are not valued by technocratic recovery processes and their presence is considered undesirable by elites (Allen 2007). For many, the price of adaptation is too high and leaving becomes the only option,⁴ while others cannot afford to migrate and remain behind in communities that are deteriorating and lack the resources to offer basic services (Goodell 2018).

Climate change is a global problem in which both the harms and the responsibility have been unequally distributed across time and geography. Despite benefiting the least from the global marketplace and development trends that have exacerbated climate impacts, vulnerable groups will be the most adversely impacted (Swim and Bloodhart 2018). Large-scale climate migration is expected in the future, with impacts primarily upon the poor, and it is already occurring in other nations and in areas of the United States. In fact, there is a long history of disaster-influenced migration within the United States, including impacts from the Dust Bowl, and massive African American migration following the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 (Rivera and Miller 2007).

Despite clear evidence of unjust outcomes, and of a system that cannot meet the needs of the entire impacted community, the 2017 hurricane season once again repeated and exacerbated these patterns of injustice. Hurricane Harvey, for example, a record-setting rainfall event for the Houston area, with over 55 inches of rainfall, impacted immigrant populations, minority households, and low-income families in disproportionate ways (Kelly et al. 2017). One study indicated that after Hurricane Harvey, Hispanic and black residents were twice as likely to experience an income shock as their white counterparts and routinely did not receive the assistance they needed (Maxwell 2018).

The direct impacts of Hurricane Harvey were significant, with over 25% of Harris County under water at peak flooding, over 13,000 persons rescued, and over 37,300 in shelters (Norton et al. 2018). The indirect, and cascading, impacts are proving to be even greater, as only 20% of impacted households carried flood insurance (FEMA 2018). One study found that as many as 30% of residents were behind in mortgage or rent payments as a result of disaster losses, or impacts to employment following Harvey, and that around 25% were struggling to pay for food (Goodell 2018).

According to several estimates, losses from natural⁵ disasters in 2017 were the highest recorded in US history, exceeding $306 billion. Wildfires, alone, led to over $10 billion in damages in Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino Counties in California (Mark 2018). The rising costs of disaster impacts, coupled with several projections of ever-worsening impacts, have been utilized by politicians and others to argue for greater local investment and responsibility for disaster risk reduction and recovery costs, including increased personal responsibility (Pew Charitable Trusts 2018). This narrative is further used to excuse failures in places such as Puerto Rico, which, as a US territory, lacks the political clout of Texas.

Hurricane Maria caused over $90 billion in damages to Puerto Rico, making it the third costliest cyclone in the United States since 1900. The resulting damage to the power grid, water infrastructure, healthcare, and other essential services led to a series of cascading impacts and an ongoing public health emergency. Puerto Ricans, on average, lacked cell service for 41 days, water for 68 days, and went 84 days without electricity (Palm Beach Post 2018). Although the initial death count was set at 64, subsequent studies have set the death count as high as 4645. As of August 2018, the official death count was revised to 2975 (Fink 2018). These deaths were a direct result of lack of water, a faltering power grid, healthcare disruption, and a general lack of essential services (Hernandez and McGinley 2018). Unlike Texas, Puerto Rico lacks any voting power in the US Congress, having only one delegate without an official vote (Palm Beach Post 2018).

This book draws upon an analysis of the official and media reports following Hurricanes Harvey and Maria to illustrate the fact that the challenges described in this text have continued through to more recent events. Examples from Hurricanes Maria and Harvey are included in each chapter, as well as older examples following Hurricane Katrina and other events, where more peer-reviewed research is available.

1.1 Applying a Justice Paradigm

As the preceding examples clearly indicate, there is a clear nexus between justice and disaster recovery outcomes, with an unequal distribution of disaster risk and vulnerability—creating a cycle in which pre-event vulnerabilities are exacerbated by disaster impacts and failure to fully recover is framed as a personal and community failing to be resilient. There has been some exploration by social scientists, and others, of unjust and unfair outcomes in disaster recovery, including a robust literature on vulnerability that dates back several decades. There is a general understanding within the literature that current post-disaster policies and frameworks disadvantage the most vulnerable and lead to disparate outcomes, primarily through the perpetuation of structural inequalities (Wisner et al. 2005; Pelling 2003).

However, the mechanisms by which this occurs, and the extent to which the regulations and agency cultures drive this outcome, are not fully understood. There is also a general understanding that social and economic structures, including land use policies and historic practices, such as redlining, have concentrated hazard risk into vulnerable zones whose inhabitants do not benefit from the very policies that create and increase their risk (Freudenburg et al. 2008; Tierney 2010). This text will synthesize existing research across multiple disciplines, including public administration, political science, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and economics, in order to improve our understanding of the complexity of interactions between these mechanisms in the context of disaster resilience. This synthesis is coupled with real-world examples from more recent events, where information is available.

To that end, this discussion will bring together existing literature, seeking to integrate the language and theories of justice more fully with the concepts of resilience and vulnerability, including the role of historic practices and systemic racism in the creation of the modern hazard landscape. Some researchers have applied concepts from environmental justice to the challenge of climate adaptation, but this literature remains limited to particular cases such as Hurricane Katrina. Even when a justice framing is applied, there is a lack of clarity regarding the conceptualization of justice being utilized, as described by Allen (2013) in her analysis of justice impacts on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) assistance and outcomes that utilized the framings of distributive justice, procedural justice, cultural justice, representative justice, and capacities justice. In fact, it is often the case that communities utilize multiple definitions and framings of justice in order to conceptualize their claims of harm and advocate for improvements. Although a strict definition may not be necessary in order for community leaders to advocate for a reduction in injustice, and at times the ability to use a wide range of terminology that responds to the particular political framing in use can be beneficial, it is still important to acknowledge that the definitions implicitly or explicitly embedded within strategies and techniques of NGOs and community organizations do lead to different results (Allen 2013). More often than not, justice itself is not explicitly framed, but overt examples of injustice are called out and identified. This type of approach can serve to bring attention to particular actions, but cannot in and of itself drive significant structural change. This book proposes a more purposeful definition of justice in order to create more concrete policy options for the reduction of injustice.

1.2 Conceptualizing Justice

The majority of efforts to apply a justice paradigm to the study of disasters and disaster risks have originated from the study of environmental justice. An environmental injustice occurs when an individual or a group bears disproportionate risks, has unequal access to environmental goods, or has less opportunity to participate in environmental decision-making (Shrader-Frechette 2002). This book argues that the same measure could readily be applied to the creation of risk in other contexts, such as along coastlines or within floodplains, where individuals or groups are asked to bear disproportionate risks without having proportionate access to the benefits of development or economic decisions that have exacerbated their risk. In other words, a social injustice is perpetuated through the creation and exacerbation of disaster risk. This book argues that there can be no resilience if there is no justice and that recovery cannot truly occur if it is not just. To this end, the book will utilize the phrase Just Recovery⁶ to encompass all of the elements of a just approach to resilience and recovery. This term will be further defined later in this chapter.

The intricate connection between environmental injustice and disaster risk—through the degradation of environmental resources that protect communities; the siting of hazardous facilities in impoverished, indigenous, or minority communities; or other mechanisms that increase community vulnerability—makes this application of an environmental justice lens particularly apt. It is often the case